


Migratory Birds

by StormLeviosa



Series: In Another Life [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alfred is British and it shows, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, College, Damian Wayne Feels, Damian Wayne is Not Robin, Damian Wayne-centric, Developing Friendships, Dick Grayson is Damian Wayne’s Parent, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Original Character(s), Not Canon Compliant, Protective Dick Grayson, Veterinary Medicine, bc I am British and idk how to write it otherwise, bc fuck canon-Bruce, i guess, no capes AU, only in chapter 1 tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25863907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: Damian used to be Robin, used to tackle world-ending dangers every day, but that doesn't make college any less scary.aka. Damian fulfills my childhood dream and goes to vet school(sequel to 'Sticks and Stones')
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Series: In Another Life [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876492
Comments: 37
Kudos: 169
Collections: Dick Grayson is Damian Wayne's Parent, Greatest Batfam Fics to Ever Exist





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, I did not intend to write or post this for awhile but it wouldn't leave my head so I started and now here we are. Originally a one-shot but now definitely not (rip my free time I guess).
> 
> Content warning for mentions of cancer (in animals), euthanasia etc. anything that might get mentioned with regards to vet stuff.

Damian can’t sleep. 

It’s a common problem. Every night, he has a cup of sleepy-time tea, gets in his pajamas, brushes his teeth, wraps himself in the covers and...doesn’t sleep. He’s tried everything: counting sheep, not using electronics or reading before bed, playing white noise (though New York has plenty of it anyway), playing relaxing music, anything short of sleeping tablets. He refuses to be medicated and Dick doesn’t want him to be. So he lies awake and waits for sleep to come.

It’s a long wait.

They think it’s because he’s used to being up late, that his circadian rhythm has shifted to accommodate patrol and Robin duties and once he gets used to the new routine (although it's been years now so he's pretty sure he's more than used to it) it’ll be better. The science is sound. Damian can believe it as long as Dick does. And Dick still believes it after all this time.

When he wakes, it is to sunlight streaming through the windows and Alfred the cat on his chest mewling for food. The windows are a nuisance he can’t wait to fix: the lack of curtains to block out the fluorescent lights of the city and the glowing sun irks him. But Alfred is never a nuisance. He pets the cat fondly, stroking the smooth fur of his head until Alfred purrs deep in his chest. The rumbling against him is comforting. 

“I can’t get you food until you move,” he tells him and Alfred waves his tail imperiously. He huffs a laugh as Alfred bops his nose and the movement dislodges the cat from his chest. Finally, he can get up. 

Pennyworth is in the kitchen when Damian gets there. He’s making scrambled eggs at the stove, a plate of toast already on the table. Damian stoops to feed Alfred the cat, fills Titus’s bowl, then slides into his spot. Pennyworth passes him a plate and a letter.

Damian doesn’t get post. Even though they fought father and won, even though Damian’s got friends all over the world (and on other worlds entirely), even though he’s pushed himself into spaces that Damian Wayne, heir to Gotham’s richest man, would not dare to hope of ever exploring, he never gets mail. It could be one of his charities, but they normally have special envelopes. It could be school, but he doesn’t recognise the font of the address. It’s been years since Robin, since cases and fights to the death and crazy people out for blood. It barely passes his mind that perhaps he should check the letter for traps. He is still just as careful opening his mail as he always has been, sliding one thumb along the edge of the flap so it doesn’t tear. It isn’t a letter inside, but a brochure. A college brochure.

Damian had forgotten.

He goes to school that day, and Dick goes to work and Pennyworth does whatever it is that Pennyworth does during the day. Nothing exciting happens. They hand in an English assignment and get a Chemistry test back. Damian already knew he’d done well - he always does - but his Chem test was a perfect score and he’s learnt to allow that little shiver of pride (he’s learnt enough to ignore the flush of shame at anything less). He takes the subway home and tries to listen to a podcast except it’s rush hour so he can’t hear anything over the hubbub of people hurrying home. When he finally gets through the door, Dick is waiting for him, chattering eagerly to Pennyworth about someone at work - a child, he thinks - and the brochure is still on the table.

That’s unusual.

Pennyworth normally cleans during the day, normally tidies the kitchen and the lounge and does the laundry when there is some. It’s not normal for him to leave anything lying around, especially not mail. Then Dick sees Damian. Damian knows exactly when this happens because Dick has a particular way of smiling with his whole body when he sees Damian that he does with no one else. So, Dick sees Damian, lights up the room with his smile, and grabs the letter off the table. He waves it in Damian’s face as if he doesn’t already know about it, as if Damian wasn’t the one who opened it this morning.

“Damian! Why didn’t you tell me you were getting ready for college apps? Do you know where you want to visit? We could go at the weekend!” Damian looks at the floor and slips under his arm.

“I don’t know,” he says. It answers all of the questions.

The brochure is for a local community college Damian wouldn’t have even considered as little as three years ago. Sixteen year old Damian was a bit of an asshole; he could be honest with himself. Sixteen year old Damian thought he was too good for anything but the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, thought he was too good for anything but the very best. Damian is more humble now. He lives a normal life with normal people in a normal house. It doesn’t matter anymore that Damian was not born normal, was not raised normal. He has outgrown abnormality. He looks at the brochure for community college.

The problem with college is Damian doesn’t know what to do. He knows Tim had the same problem, spent hours, days, weeks, lying around complaining, made lists upon lists of pros and cons of the infinite options. That’s just the way Tim is. Tim eventually made a choice, ‘lived his best life’ as he would put it, and Damian is not Tim. Damian doesn’t make lists, likes doing instead of planning. He’s not committed to choosing really, just browses and flicks through without taking anything in. The list of possible majors is a long one. Nothing sparks his interest. There are subjects he likes, obviously, and subjects he’s good at. Sometimes they even overlap. But he doesn’t want to study chemical engineering or ancient history or criminal law, he doesn't want to follow Tim into the arts. He doesn’t have that one thing he’s good at over everything else, not like Dick or Tim or even Jason. It’s strange to admit he’s not special. For so long, he was told he was made to be better than the others, made to be perfect, that even now admitting that he’s not feels weird. 

They pretend college doesn’t exist for a while and Damian is grateful for it. He feels like everything is moving too fast, like something is looming just beyond the horizon that he can’t see. It’s nice to just sit and wait for it to come to him. He doesn’t want to make a decision yet. He doesn’t want anything to change.

They visit the community college, NYU, Columbia, CUNY, Cornell. Damian sits in taster lectures, in meetings, in talks for prospective students and their guardians. He dutifully takes every leaflet shaken at him and makes a collage on his cork board, They wander across campuses and traipse across the city. They eat at cafes and food stalls and sit in parks with leafy trees as summer rolls sedately on. Damian doesn’t make a decision. 

Dick puts off buying curtains to take the weekend off and go out of state. They don’t drive because they’re New Yorkers now, but they fly out to San Francisco and get Tim to show them round his campus. He lends them his car and they drive down south to look at UCLA and Cal Tech. Then they fly home. Damian has a dozen more brochures and no opinion.

They’ve been so busy they don’t notice Titus is off his food. Damian walks him every evening and feeds him twice a day but with all the time away for colleges and school assignments and that one trip out of state that his geography class had taken, he hadn’t been paying as much attention. He regrets it now. Two days after Damian notices he hasn’t eaten his breakfast, Titus throws up in the lounge. Four days later, he hasn’t stopped and Damian can barely get him to drink. They take him to the vet.

The vet palpitates Titus’s stomach, listens to his heart, his lungs, takes some blood and sends them home but tells them to come back in two days. When they do, it’s for scans and ultrasounds and shaving off patches of Titus’s beautiful silky fur. Damian tries not to mourn it too badly: it could save his life after all. The blood tests are clear and the scans haven’t come back yet but Titus still isn’t eating and Damian is half mad with worry. 

It isn’t a feeling he is used to. It isn’t a feeling he likes.

They get a call and the vet wants to speak to Dick but Dick isn’t there. He asks to speak to Pennyworth but Pennyworth is doing the grocery shopping because Dick isn’t there. It is only Damian and Damian is eighteen years old; he can handle a phone call about his dog. He’s an adult now. 

The vet says it’s cancer and Damian’s whole world falls apart.

It sounds terrifying but actually it’s okay, or so the vet says. (His name is Mark and he’s got the kind of voice that makes Damian think he’s telling the truth even though he knows that “it’s going to be okay” is the most common lie ever told.) They can do a surgery to remove the tumour and Titus will live out the rest of his days happy as Larry. Damian thinks of how slow Titus had been on their runs, how unenthusiastic he’d been at the park, how he’d thought it was just because he was getting on a bit, and wonders  _ could I have fixed this if only I’d known better?  _

College applications are put on hold while Titus has his surgery, and then slowly recovers. And while Dick takes a long hard look at their finances. They want to avoid using father’s money, even though the money father put aside for him is Damian's technically. Damian spends a lot of time with Titus (and with Alfred the cat who he holds extra tight on those few days that Titus is gone, just in case, even though he only gets scratches for his efforts), and at the library, and the vets. He talks a lot to the staff. They sometimes let him play with the animals that are almost ready to go home and need stimulation and before he knows it, he’s got weekend work experience there. By October, he’s allowed to watch surgical procedures instead of just routine stuff like vaccs and checkups. He finds it fascinating. Of course it’s not all fancy diagnostics - most of the ops are neuters or spays - and there are days when he returns home miserable because they had to put an animal down, but mostly he feels a little bubble in his chest, all warm and soft, and every time someone’s pet gets to go home it grows a little bigger.

_ Oh _ , he thinks, and remembers a long-forgotten conversation, before Dick, before New York, before court and leaving Gotham and Robin behind. He remembers Tim, and go fish, and his quiet, halting voice, unused and unheard.  _ Veterinary medicine.  _

They go back to Cornell. They go to Purdue. He talks to Tim and the guidance counselor at school and he makes his applications, early of course. He applies for financial aid and it frustrates him because the money’s  _ right there  _ but he can’t have it because  _ father _ . He takes his SATs, takes the AP exam, takes the ACT. He graduates. He’s not a Valedictorian but it doesn’t matter. Tim flies in from California, and even Jason lurks in the background of their celebration and when he goes to the clinic that weekend they throw a party just for him. He has the whole summer to prepare.

He spends it with his pets. Why wouldn’t he?


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian finally actually makes it to college

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to do actual research for this chapter because American vet school is very different from UK vet school (namely, in America you can't do vet med until after you graduate? In the UK you just go straight into a vet med degree and it takes 5 years but that's the only degree you need which makes much more sense to me). Oh well. We already knew America was weird.

Gen Eds are the bane of his existence for a year. But then he has all the credits he needs from Lit and History and Languages and Geography and finally, _finally_ , he can transfer out of the community college he’s been commuting to every day and onto somewhere better. It’s been his mantra for the better part of a year. _Cornell, Graduate, Vet school._ He didn’t bother making friends there - it’s not like he was staying - but he doesn’t have an excuse once he transfers. Oh well. Dick always did say he needed more friends than Jon.

His roommate’s name is Alec and he’s on the exuberant side. Within ten minutes of Damian knocking on the door, he’s bounced his way through shaking everyone’s hand, rattled off an explanation of why he took the bed he did (which doesn’t even matter because to Damian they are exactly the same), and knocked over two boxes and a suitcase. He reminds Damian of Titus when he was still a puppy, all too long limbs and boundless energy. He seems nice enough, though, and Damian's friends have always been on the jovial side.

After Dick and Pennyworth leave, Alec drags Damian to the common area where everyone is apparently congregating for the typical RA-led introductions and icebreakers. They are just as terrible as expected. All of them have to share their name, major, room number and a “fun fact” about themselves. Alec is studying Economics, which seems rather at odds with his personality but Damian shouldn’t judge, and fences in his free time. Damian tells people he’s majoring in Animal Sciences (true) and used to live in Gotham (also true) which sparks a lot of questions about what it’s like there that Damian avoids answering as much as he can. He tells them he lived in the suburbs (sort of true) and that he didn’t actually see much of the really crazy stuff (an outright lie). He doesn’t remember most of the others. There’s a girl (Ziba? Zaida? It begins with a Z) who studies BioChem which means they’ll share some classes and she’s only two doors down, a guy who he thinks said his name was Inigo has a collection of throwing knives and the part of Damian that never quite left the cape and cowl game behind is aching to see them. Maybe over time he’ll learn everyone’s names but he doubts it. He’s never been good at that.

Getting into the swing of things takes time. His whole life, Damian has simultaneously been expected to know how to be independent and been waited on hand and foot. Is it possible to live with Alfred Pennyworth and not know how to cook something vaguely healthy? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean he’s ever had to do it. And student life means being broke and eating pasta and butter straight out of a saucepan at 11pm because you have nothing else in the cupboard and you’ve spent five hours writing a research paper due at midnight and you’re so hungry you’d eat your own hand if you had to. Okay maybe Damian isn’t good at fending for himself. He goes running every morning, but it doesn’t feel the same without Titus loping along at his side. He joins an art club but finds he prefers sketching alone. He goes to fencing with Alec but it’s just different enough from sword fighting that he’s constantly off-balance. He avoids the other martial arts entirely. It is more for everyone else's safety than any preference of his. 

Thanksgiving comes quickly and Dick comes all the way out to Ithaca to pick him up which Damian appreciates. He wasn’t looking forward to the five hour bus ride alone. Alec’s parents show up in their pick-up and they go out for lunch all together at a tiny pizza place that’s actually pretty good for the price. It’s popular with students anyway. Dick scarfs down his pizza with all the gusto that he normally shows for good food, while Damian takes more time. Alec’s parents make polite conversation but it’s clear they don’t know quite what to make of them. Most people don’t. It’s been a while since it mattered though.

“So, umm, Dick,” they begin and Damian, as always, rolls his eyes. “What do you do?” Dick looks up from his almost bare plate and tells them he works at a community centre, teaching kids gymnastics. Damian tunes it out. It’s a conversation he’s heard far too many times over the years. Alec looks just as bored, he thinks, watching the people wandering around outside.

They pay the bill and Alec’s parents stand to leave while Dick slurps up the last of his milkshake.

“Well, Alec, we should leave your friend and his dad to get on with their day.” Dick chokes.

“Oh, I’m not his dad,” he gasps out, once he has some breath back. “I’m his brother.” 

Damian has never understood why people are so surprised by Dick being his brother. Dick has always looked younger than he is, never old enough to be Damian’s father, and they don’t look that alike. Evidently, people don’t agree with his assessment because everywhere they go at least one person mistakes them for father and son. Damian has learnt not to care, at least openly. There is still that tiny traitorous part of him that whispers he should be more proud of his bloodline, of his true father back in Gotham who saves lives every day instead of whatever it is that Dick currently does. He’s working on silencing that little voice permanently. So when Alec’s parents say “oh!” with faces a picture of surprise, and Dick chuckles, Damian does too. They have learnt not to explain the intricacies of their familial relations unless asked. It is rarely necessary and normally causes far more confusion than it needs to. Alec's parents leave, presumably to interrogate Alec about them, and Damian and Dick go on their way.

On thanksgiving morning, he takes Titus to the park to throw a ball for him, breathing in the frost and marveling at the stillness of the world. There is a dusting of white hair around Titus’s muzzle that matches the frost crystals on the gate. The dog is getting older but Damian loves him just the same as he did at age eleven when the puppy was entrusted to his care. He’s still got some years left in him. They don't see a soul on the way home and Damian loves it. He thinks Tim would like the view, would take so many photos, and wonders how he’s enjoying thanksgiving with his team, if they’re still in California or if they’ve congregated at the Kent farm. Either way, Tim won’t get to enjoy Pennyworth’s famous thanksgiving spread this year. He can smell it when he returns: pastry and roasting vegetables and squash and gravy. Every year, Pennyworth makes a delicious vegetarian alternative to turkey. With just the three of them, there’s little point in getting a whole bird when Damian doesn’t eat meat. This year, he thinks it might be a mushroom wellington but sometimes it’s something with lentils or stuffed squash. The sides are just as delicious and they never leave the table hungry.

Dick is, of course, banned from the kitchen for the duration of the day and keeps himself happy by setting up the lounge for movies. Damian offers to help Pennyworth - who refuses, as usual - before joining Dick on the sofa. They start off with Dumbo because the circus nostalgia is good for Dick, before moving on to Lady and the Tramp for the animals. This is their tradition: Disney and Pennyworth’s food and appreciating each other in deeds, not words.

Dick rents a car to take him back. They make the journey in silence for the most part, Dick keeping his eyes on the road and Damian resting his head against the window as he watches the world go by. It vibrates against his forehead and gives him a headache but he just grits his teeth and bears it. In the back of the car, they have a bag full of boxed mac and cheese, a stack of Pennyworth-approved tupperware meals (he always gives Damian enough for a full week of meals and it’s better than cafeteria food so he takes it), and Damian’s favourite fluffy blanket for the cold nights ahead. It smells of Titus. He resists the urge to unfold it and wrap himself up. 

When Dick starts tapping the wheel and fidgeting as much as he’s able to while driving, they pull over at a gas station even though the tank isn’t empty. It’s because Dick hates long drives, hates the way the highway stretches out forever, unchanging. He gets bored and distracted and that’s dangerous, so they take breaks. The burgers and slushees they buy are the kind of terrible that would have Pennyworth waving a broom at them but as they sit on the bonnet of the car and listen to the cars zipping past on the highway, Damian can’t help but be reminded of the old days when he was Robin to Dick’s Batman and patrol ended with rooftop ice creams. Staring out over the countryside feels a lot like watching over Gotham. He remembers what he said to Dick back then, says it again.

“We were the best.” Dick nods.

“We were.” Damian has grown enough that this admission does not make him angry anymore. As a teenager, he was always furious that Dick had passed him off to his father and left him behind. If they were the best, why didn’t he stay? But he’s better now.

“Do you ever miss it?” He doesn’t need to say what ‘it’ is because he knows Dick knows. Because they _were_ the best and they could understand each other without words. He thinks Dick probably knows he’s not sure which answer he’d prefer. 

“Sometimes,” Dick admits, “it was addictive, you know? And you’re right, we were an awesome team. I missed being able to look around and see I was doing good in the community and at home. But mostly I missed you.” Damian wishes they’d never started this conversation.

“So, yes, I missed it. Yes, I missed making a difference, but I think we still are, in our own ways. Maybe it’s not kicking Scarecrow in the face, but it’s still important. You’re going to do great things, Damian, I’ve always known.” It’s far too similar to what he’d heard every day growing up, but from Dick it somehow feels reassuring, like Dick's "great things" include stepping out the front door, or eating a bowl of ice cream just because it makes him happy. Even so, Damian can’t help but ask.

“But then, why?” It’s an unfinished question, a trailing thread that he doesn’t want to see the end of. He doesn’t dare finish the question, doesn’t dare think of the answer. 

‘ _Why didn’t you take me sooner?’_

Damian had once asked to live with Dick, to be Flamebird to his Nightwing. He’d arrived, suitcase in hand, and said ‘we were the best, Richard’ and begged him to let him stay. And Dick had said no.

Dick is quiet for a long time.

“I meant what I said then,” he finally replies. “I wasn’t ready. I don’t think I’d ever have been ready, if I hadn’t left Bludhaven, if Alfred hadn’t been there to help out. I was young and I could barely look after myself and there you were, even younger than I was and so vulnerable and you’d chosen _me_ and it was more terrifying than anything I’d ever faced. You said you wanted to be my partner but I saw you, a kid, and thought you wanted me to be your dad. I couldn’t do it. I regret it. I’ll never stop regretting it. But I thought I would ruin you and I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.” And perhaps it isn't the answer Damian wants - Damian doesn't know, even in the deepest recesses of his heart, what answer he wants - but it's an answer and it's that mix of logic and emotion that makes Dick _Dick._ Damian can accept that. Even if it isn't precisely the answer he wants, it's the truth. 

They finish their slurpees in silence and hit the road again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My ywriter doc for this has a whole section just on the OCs. They have backstories and everything. I hope maybe you'll like them?
> 
> If you want to come scream at me about this fic, or about the absolute bs DC is pulling with the comics at the moment, find me on tumblr (@storm-leviosa-fanfics) or leave a comment. I will reply. I love comments to the moon and back.


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> College shenanigans feat. normal (ish) society

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been... a while but here we are with a new chapter!
> 
> I am a little overwhelmed by real life stuff so this remains my comfort fic. I can avoid doing my uni work for a bit if I'm writing fic and no one can stop me.

Ziba drags him out to a cooking class she goes to on Thursday nights.

“I heard you swearing in Farsi,” she tells him sheepishly. She doesn’t look straight at him when she speaks. Instead, choosing to glance from the corner of her eye as she walks next to him. He likes that she’s quiet. Alec is friendly and full of life but he can be a bit much sometimes and Damian has always valued the quiet moments. Ziba’s family is from Iran and she misses them. She tells him he shouldn’t hide his Farsi, that she likes hearing it. Damian looks at the floor, doesn’t thank her because it’s not like he needed permission to speak his mother tongue, but tells her he will - in Farsi, naturally - and she blushes.

They make bolani and a type of qormah and Damian finds there are tears in his eyes. Ziba, eating next to him, smiles like she knows what’s in Damian’s head. 

“It’s been so long since I’ve had a good qormah,” he tells her and she nods in agreement.

“Yeah, me too.”

He walks back with her and in the dark he feels more daring than he has since he gave up Robin. It seizes him in its grip and shakes him until he submits to his impulses.

“My parents were not married,” he begins. “My grandfather arranged for them to meet and have a relationship because of the power and wealth that they wielded. It was politics, nothing more. I think they did love each other, deep down, but there was a falling out and my father left them before I was born.” They both shudder. There are consequences for unmarried mothers. “I grew up in the mountains. I do not know where precisely but it was remote and it was popular with the armed militant groups there. At my grandfather’s insistence, I was raised a warrior. He remembers the wars that spanned the world and reached the mountains and valleys where we lived.” For a moment, the only sound is their footsteps.

“Your grandfather must be very old, to remember that,” Ziba says and he inclines his head.

“He is old beyond measure. He taught me to use a sword before a pen, to fight for the sake of fighting before others tear you down. But my mother taught me to be human. She taught me to read and write and make art. She taught me how to care for the hawks and the stories of our people. And then, when it got too dangerous, she sent me to live with father. He didn’t even know I existed and she sent me away from my home and everything I knew and I shouldn’t miss it because there were so many problems with the way they raised me but sometimes it feels more like home than America ever will.” He stops. Breathes. Allows the conversation to rest.

“Your mother sounds very brave,” Ziba says. It is true that Talia al Ghul is no coward - fear was wiped out of their family with the birth of the Head of the Demon - but the story he told is not entirely truthful and so he cannot honestly say that the decision was a brave one. 

“My family left Iran when I was six. I barely remember it. But they were born and raised there and they took part of their home with them. They raised me Iranian, to follow Islam, to be kind and hospitable to everyone, and I’m glad I got that even if kids were cruel about it.” She touches her hijab as if to make sure it’s still there and Damian seethes because he knows exactly how cruel children could be.

“Children are awful,” he agrees. “But we don’t have to deal with them anymore, just crazy adults, and most of them have the sense to stay quiet unless they want someone to slap them.” Ziba covers her laugh with her fist. They’re almost back at the dorm so they move to lighter topics.

“The food was very good,” he says and she nods.

“Yes. You should come again! It’s free food once a week and the people are nice.” He smiles at her and thinks about the qormah and the bolani that he hadn’t eaten since he was a child in Nanda Parbat, about sitting cross-legged next to Ziba and eating how he used to with mother, scraping the bowl like a heathen to savour the last few morsels.

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

It’s a step forward to being a normal college student, something Damian never even thought to hope he might be. So yes, maybe he will go back, maybe he will make a friend of Ziba, maybe he will fill his time with things other than work.

In the lead up to Christmas, there’s a number of attacks on students making their way home. Damian isn’t worried about it: it’s been years since Gotham, but he’s still more than capable of fighting off any idiot who tries to get the jump on him or his friends. Others disagree, apparently.

“Self defense training. Tuesday. Be there,” says the RA (Benny. Geology major.) He raises a hand when Damian starts to protest.

“It’s compulsory, no ifs, no buts.”

“I could probably teach the class,” he says flatly and Benny crosses his arms over his chest and stares him down. Damian feels extraordinarily like a child being reprimanded. He doesn’t like it.

“Fine. I’ll go.” He folds like a piece of paper.

The class is taught by two older students: a guy and a girl. The guy is small and lean and bounces on his toes when he walks just like Dick. The girl is built like a tank, tall and muscled and broad. Damian thinks she’s probably double his weight. She’s quiet though, smooth and still and fluid. If he’d seen her on patrol, he’d definitely have seen her as the bigger threat. They introduce themselves and split them into two groups. Damian is in a group with Ziba, who looks relieved to be with him, another girl from his floor, two guys from the corridor opposite and three others he doesn’t recognise. The guy, Frazier, has them introduce themselves then asks who has previous experience. Damian and his other floormate put up their hands. She’s a brown belt in karate, apparently, which is impressive. He hadn’t known anyone was interested in martial arts particularly. 

“I grew up in Gotham,” he tells them. As if that explains everything (it does. If you know anything about what life in Gotham is like, which no one does.) When Frazier asks him for an explanation, he provides.

“It’s unusual in Gotham for people to _not_ undergo at least some formal martial arts or self defense training. I left when I was fifteen but my father was a bit...obsessed with our safety and made us learn everything we could. I’m a black belt in five forms of martial arts and a brown belt in three more. I also sword fight among...other things.”

Silence.

“I know they said this was compulsory but shit, dude, why are you here?” Damian shrugs. He doesn’t really know, other than not having a particular desire to face Benny’s ire. 

“I could assist in your teaching, if you want,” he tells Frazier. There is an element of hysteria to his voice when he responds, as if he can’t believe Damian even offered.

“Sure,” he says, breathlessly. “Sure. Yeah. You can do that.”

And thus Damian turns into a dummy. He lets Frazier use him for demonstrations, throw him around, place his hands on him. Not that many years ago, he would not have stood for it, would have done everything he could to stop him from laying a hand on him. The Damian of the past would not have offered help in the first place. The Damian of the present stands still as Frazier wraps an arm around his throat and tries not to shiver. He moves slowly, telegraphing his movements as he swings his fist at Frazier’s groin, his elbow up to smash a chin. It does not connect, Damian makes sure of it. Control was the last thing he learnt but the one that lingered longest.

The week before Christmas break is finals week and everyone goes a little crazy. Damian finds a little alcove in the library and just...doesn’t leave. He enters a dream-like world of books and diagrams and notes and equations and copious amounts of caffeine which until then he hadn’t so much as touched (he refused to sully the perfection of his body with such things, did not need whatever boost it would give… except, he is not perfect. He is made of fixed parts and patched up skin and perhaps he maybe needs just a little, just to get through the night, just to get through this section). He sits his exams; he goes back to studying. He submits an essay; he goes back to studying. He does the quiz; he goes back to studying. He comes back to himself late on Friday night, well after his final assignment was due, hungry and bleary-eyed and feeling like death warmed over (and he of all people would know what that feels like). His bed calls to him but his stomach growls louder and it doesn’t take long to make microwave mac and cheese.

Sleep does not come easy to Damian. It never has and it never will. His body is not trained to sleep deeply or dream of better worlds or wake refreshed in the morning. If Damian dreams, it is of blood and battles lost and people dead and gone. If Damian sleeps, it is the sleep of the hunted, the twitchy sleep that lingers on the threshold of awakening. After finals, Damian sleeps for a full twelve hours without so much as rolling over. 

He finally wakes when Alec shakes his shoulder and tips ice water on his face. It is almost midafternoon and his bus leaves in two hours. Damian has not even begun packing. Alec agrees to help him - his parents are picking him up the next morning and he packed before finals even began because Alec is weirdly organised for someone so messy - and they throw as much laundry in his suitcase as possible. Some extra clothes go in his backpack, along with some books he needs and his sketchpad and pens. There. That’s everything. He has… ten minutes to run to the bus stop on the other side of campus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have tried to be sensitive and do good research into Middle Eastern cultures and not monumentally screw stuff up, but if you have any input let me know. 
> 
> To be honest, I do love the OCs in this fic. They are not necessarily based on real people, just characters spawned from my own imagination and that makes them special to me. I have tried to make them diverse and interesting and cool, but if you hate them please don't take it out on me? 
> 
> Let me know what you think. Leave a comment or scream at me on tumblr. I will always answer. I love you all; you're wonderful!!


	4. Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home for the holidays, and a test result

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're gonna get an update tomorrow too, specially for christmas so that's exciting!  
> Funny how I started this fic back in what September? and now I'm basically in line with real time. 
> 
> I'm going to stick a minor content warning on this, just for a lot of self-deprecating thoughts, self esteem issues etc relating to grades, and a description of a panic attack (sort of). If this is not your kind of thing, or if it will negatively impact you and you don't want to read it, skip the section from "The email loads." to "He should tell them." (not inclusive).

When Damian finally gets home, he notices two things:

  1. It is so late that even Pennyworth is asleep,
  2. Tim is there.



The first thing just makes him feel even more tired, although he has only been awake for about ten hours. The second is an annoyance. If Tim is here it means sharing a room, means sharing attention and space and the  _ bathroom _ . Damian had been looking forward to having long showers again but alas, Tim is there to ruin it. He curls his lip in disgust, but it’s mostly teasing.

“Eww, it’s you,” he says and Tim grins.

“Oh look, the demon finally returned from hell.” 

This is how they are now. There was a time, back when things were weirder, when they were so careful with each other, so wary of breaking their fragile brotherhood, that such teasing would have been unheard of. They’ve grown since then. The past is firmly behind them and now they can act like real brothers instead of their confused, uncertain circling, simultaneously violently overprotective and violently argumentative. Their arguments don't involve knives anymore. Mostly.  


“Is there space for me to put my stuff, or did you fill my room with your clutter again?” he says, ignoring that most of his luggage is laundry.

“Nah I’m taking the couch this time, don’t worry. Your room is all yours.” Well, that makes a nice change. He leaves Tim sitting hunched over his laptop on the couch and heads to his room.

When he wakes, it is to Alfred the cat curled up on his stomach and Titus’s wet nose making a damp patch on his pant leg. He can’t move Alfred off him, it’s unthinkable, so he just stares into Titus’s liquid brown eyes and tries to telepathically convey that no, he can’t feed him yet. It doesn’t work - Damian has been many things in his life, but telepathic is not one of them - and Titus starts whining, getting progressively louder until Tim whacks the wall between Damian’s room and the living room and yells at him.

“Just feed the damn dog already.” Damian rolls his eyes. Typical. Tim must be trying to become nocturnal again. The rumpus does, however, wake up Alfred the cat, who leaps gracefully to the floor and joins Titus in begging for breakfast. 

Pennyworth is making eggs as Damian tips food into Alfred and Titus’s bowls. Dick sits at the kitchen island with his head resting on his arms, still half asleep. Damian sticks the coffee pot on. He isn’t overly fond of it but he understands the need for an energy boost and Dick obviously needs it. 

He isn’t sure what he’s meant to do now he’s home. Finals took up so much of his time and energy and he knows he’s meant to be resting really, re-energising for another term, but his brain is still buzzing with all the facts and figures and equations he’s stuffed into it. Titus needs a walk. Alfred the cat needs a brush. He wants to attempt to recreate what they made at Thursday’s cooking class. There: he has a list of things to do today.

The coffee pot gurgles and he pours a cup for Dick, sliding it across the table to him. Dick groans into his arms and Damian wonders why the hell he’s so tired. It’s not the normal level of ‘I just woke up’ grogginess, but actual bone deep tiredness and Damian hasn’t seen that often in Dick. Tim, sure, but not Dick. Dick normally has too much energy. It crosses his mind that perhaps he stayed up to wait for Damian to arrive. But everyone was asleep when he got in except Tim. 

“Are you tired?” he asks and Dick gulps down the boiling hot coffee before he responds.

“How can you tell?” Damian raises an eyebrow, a technique he perfected in childhood, and gestures to Dick’s entire slumped frame. “That bad, huh?” He doesn’t dignify the question with a response. Dick sighs and takes another gulp of coffee.

“I’ve been working overtime all week,” he says. “And then yesterday there was so much drama and this kid decided to jump off the top of the climbing frame for the fun of it and broke her wrist so of course I had to take her to the emergency room and I only got home a few hours before you did. Then I had to wait up for Tim to get in because he doesn’t have a key and by that point it was so late I wasn’t even tired so I just read a book instead.” A low whistle from the doorway and Alfred slides three plates onto the table.

“Ah, Timothy. I see you decided to join us.” Tim bypassed the table in favour of the coffee pot. 

“No point in sleeping. Titus woke me up,” he mumbles around a mug of coffee. The dog in question pokes his nose up over the edge of the table and Damian pushes him down before Alfred sees. He can’t have Titus at the table. It’s rule one of breakfast etiquette in their house. He does slip him one of his crusts though, when Alfred isn't looking.  


He takes Titus for a walk in the park after breakfast. Dick sets up his laptop for last minute Christmas shopping. Tim spreads a case across the coffee table - even if Dick and Damian quit the vigilante game, Tim still has his team, still does everything he possibly can to help out every single person on the planet or die trying - and squints at his own scribbled notes. Damian walks. He tosses a tennis ball a few times but mostly Titus is content to trot along beside him with his tongue lolling and his tail wagging. They sit by the pond and watch the ducks. Damian has to remind Titus not to chase them but mostly it’s peaceful. A few families are out and about, their kids playing and laughing and chasing the birds. Damian’s glad he gets to enjoy this, gets to watch the world exist without waiting for the moment it stops. Robin wouldn’t have this, he thinks. Robin would watch the families enjoying the holidays and still keep half an eye out for Calendar Man or Mr Freeze to come out and ruin everything, would go on patrol on Christmas Day instead of spending it with his family at home. It’s a strange feeling, to not miss what he once had wanted more than anything, but Damian thinks perhaps this life he’s leading is better than any that he’s left behind.

  
  
  


Damian is sketching when the group chat for his organic chem class goes wild. His phone vibrates so hard and so quickly that it almost twitches right off the table. His first thought is to silence it without checking the messages: he is sketching after all. But the message preview is an inarticulate keysmash and that’s… well it’s actually pretty normal for this particular group but it’s not massively normal over holidays. Normally the freak-outs occur when assignments are due. He doesn’t know why he’s still in the group chat, really. The class ended when he submitted his final and it’s not like they’ll be in the same classes next semester.

_ Oh.  _ The final. That explains a lot.

It’s unusual for professors to upload results so fast but this one was remarkably on top of things. Normally, Damian appreciates it, but now it’s rather more stressful. Should he check now or wait? Does he want to see what the others got? There’s no way he can go back to his sketching now. He doesn’t read the messages even though he probably should. It would at least give him an idea of why his phone’s exploding, if it was good or bad. He doesn’t even know if Dr Johnson said he would curve the grade. He doesn't know if that matters. His email takes an age to load, the little dial ticking one tiny fraction of a degree at a time. When it finally opens, he has exactly one email, one result, and he clicks on it with no expectations. 

Organic chem had been his last exam. He’d sat it in a caffeine-induced fugue-state, unaware of his surroundings or where he was or how long it had been since he’d slept. All he was aware of was the buzz of energy fading in his veins, the electric lights humming, the static of his jumper fizzing against his skin, and the paper in front of him. He does not remember the questions he answered, does not recall the calculations he did, or the topic of the long answer questions, or how many multiple choice questions there were, or even how long it took to complete the exam. He knows he did it. He knows he somehow got to the exam hall, sat down, opened the paper, used a calculator and a black ink pen and an HB pencil and 30cm ruler and probably drew some skeletal formulae and possibly did some brain-achingly complex maths, finished the paper, handed it in, and got back to his dorm room sometime in the evening in time to pack and sleep and eat and catch the bus. It is probably why he has no clue what to expect when he opens this email. He hopes he’s done well, would like to proudly say he got an A+ and celebrate a job well done, but equally that’s not confirmed and Damian’s smart but college is tough, and Damian running on two hours of sleep and enough red bull to power a car is probably not as smart as the well-rested, hydrated, composed Damian that swept through high school exams like they were nothing. The email loads.

68/100. He got a D.

Everything is collapsing around him. He feels the tattered remnants of his pride falling away, all his hard work crumbling to dust, burnt by his own arrogance. He’d thought himself so smart. He was useless, a failure, a worthless cretin. If he couldn’t even pass this, something as basic as organic chemistry, why did he ever think he was good enough to study veterinary medicine? They could kick him out right now. It’s not like he deserved his place. Cornell wants the best of the best, the future scientists and lawyers and doctors and pioneers of their fields, not some upstart brat who can’t pass a simple chem exam. They’re going to expel him. He’s never going to go to vet school, never going to graduate college, never getting a job, he’ll be a drain on society and die in a gutter. He… 

Air is difficult to come by. His heart flutters in his chest like a trapped bird. The screen is a smudge of white. He comes back to himself, bit by bit. Stops his hands from twisting; stops his stomach churning; breathes once, twice, three times. His heart is no longer caged. Focus, Damian. He cannot let himself be weak. He ignores that failure already makes him weak. There must be something to be done, some way to fix this. He has adults in his corner now, people to fight a path clear for him and help him be strong. Dick will hug him tight and whisper in his ear that it does not matter how many times he falls, only how many times he gets back up. Alfred will make him tea just the way he likes it and find him some sticky sweets to eat on Christmas night while the others eat gingerbread and salted nuts, and he won’t say anything, but he’ll be a rock for Damian to rest against while he finds his feet again. And Tim. Tim will… probably not mock Damian for it. He’ll maybe make a joke, maybe say Damian is still smarter than he is and ruffle his hair and punch his arm, maybe ignore it entirely, just shrug and let it go. None of them will be angry. Probably. Damian has never failed before. People act unpredictably to bad news and this is, obviously, bad news. He  _ thinks  _ he can trust them to catch him, but there is always that doubt poking him in the back of his mind like a tiny stone in his shoe, like a speck of dust in his eye.

He should tell them. He will tell them. Just not right now. When air comes a little easier and he doesn't feel quite so much like fractured glass about to shatter.

  
  
  


“I failed the final,” he blurts out at dinner and everything stops. The world ceases to turn; the cars are no longer honking and growling outside; the hands of the clock do not tick. Tim and Dick stare at him. Is the anger and disappointment on their faces real or a uniquely imagined horror? 

He gulps. It is the first time anyone has moved in at least five seconds. He thinks he has forgotten how to breathe.

“For Organic Chem. I failed the final.” Tim cocks his head slightly but the flat line of his mouth does not change. 

“Did you really, though?” A quirk upwards in one corner. Does he find this funny? This utter catastrophe; this lethal blow to everything Damian has worked for. Is it humorous to him, that Damian has failed at something?

“I got a D,” he says flatly. He cannot let his hurt show, cannot let them know he is disappointed or upset about this. Failure is never an option, but letting failure hurt you is asking for death. He is not some little injured creature, ready to roll over and show his belly. But Tim chuckles and anger roils in his gut.

“Kid, that’s not failing. You haven’t failed until you get an F on your test and a note telling you to go talk to the professor.” What? But...no. Damian failed. There is no sliding scale on this thing, no degrees of success. He did not get a B or higher. He failed. 

“Seriously! I straight up failed at least one class every semester I was at college. It took me  _ ages  _ to graduate. Am I a failure? Am I shit at photography because I got a D on a portfolio assignment one time? Because I didn’t show my working on a calc test and had to resit it?” Damian shakes his head. There was a time, long ago, when he would have taken this information, stored it away, and flung it in Tim’s face when he was most vulnerable. He would have used it to hurt, to lash out, to strike at weaknesses without remorse. He is not that person anymore. So Damian shakes his head and denies his brother’s failure.

“I can’t go to vet school with a  _ D _ in organic chem,” he emphasises, and Dick speaks for the first time.

“You could ask the teacher for extra credit, make it up somehow.” Damian snorts. Dr Johnson is a hard taskmaster who gives no allowances and while Damian enjoyed that in class (and his dry, sarcastic sense of humour) it is coming back to bite him now. No one suggests resitting the class. It’s not like they can afford it anyway. 

“Ask for extra credit,” Tim tells him. “Most teachers will allow it, especially if you were a good student, and if not you can either sit on your grade and hope for the best or I’ll pay for you to retake the class next semester.” They turn to look at him with eyes wide. It’s easy to forget that in their scramble for custody and the right to stay in New York, Tim casually withdrew his entire trust fund - both of them - and shoved it in an account elsewhere, that he liquidated his shares in Wayne Enterprises and stashed the cash in a high interest savings account, that he lives with his team full time and gets his rent paid by the Justice League. Tim’s loaded. And it’s easy to forget that when he’s sitting on a battered couch from the thrift store wearing torn jeans and a t-shirt Damian’s pretty sure he’s owned since he was seventeen. Somehow, in the entire application process, in all the paperwork for student loans that would cripple him for the rest of his life, they had never thought to ask Tim. Tim is also the only one of them so far to actually graduate college. It took him far longer than the average undergrad, but he did it. So, Tim's advice is basically gospel now. They don't know any better.

Damian asks for extra credit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When will my assignment grades return from the war...  
> So yeah we're on christmas break at the moment, except it's kind of not really christmas because, you guessed it, we're in tier 4 lockdown (thanks Boris). It's actually pretty okay, just not very festive.  
> Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that, yet again, we have characters based on real people. Dr Johnson was my irl A-Level chemistry teacher. He taught us organic chem and he was horribly sarcastic and deadpan and mocked us mercilessly for making mistakes, but was also weirdly nice sometimes? My other chem teacher was called Dr Mould (no I'm not making that up) and he used to refuse to mark my electronic configurations because I write in cursive so my s's were weird. I was good at chemistry, but absolute shit at exams. It was infuriating for everyone.  
> All the Americans out there will be pleased to hear that I actually did research on normal grade boundaries and was lowkey horrified. I consistently get 68% on my essays for lit and that's a 2:1 which is I think the equivalent of an A/B? Maybe an A? I'm not sure. That being said, I have never done a multiple choice test, or quiz in my life, and my teachers have never given a mark over 80%. I do not know anyone on my course that's got over 75 (that was me. I got a 75). So like, we get lower marks for higher grades but those marks are _impossible_ to get.  
> Until tomorrow people!


	5. Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas and related stuff!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I know I said I'd post this yesterday but then my housemate persuaded me to order pizza and watch the muppets with him and how could I say no to that?

Dr Johnson is strangely sympathetic to Damian’s panic. He admits that the final had been deliberately challenging and that he knows Damian can do better. He’d been shocked by his low score. Damian had been handing in all his homework and quizzes and lab reports with nothing less than 90s all semester and Dr Johnson had not expected him to fall at the final hurdle. If he gets over 80% in the packet he just sent out about dehydration of alcohols, he’d disregard the final entirely and it wouldn’t go on his transcript. Damian falls over himself thanking the man and now he has twenty pages of exercises to do before the weekend.

It takes a long time. He does it, obviously. He wants that grade. But it takes hours and hours and he just wants organic chem to be over already. 

He lays his head on his desk and groans through his teeth. One more page. Just one. He’s already done the hard work: just part c ii and iii left now. But it’s almost Christmas and he can hear Dick singing along to the radio as he strings the lights up in the living room, and hear Tim talking to Alfred in the kitchen. He wants to be with them, wants Dick to spin him around and let him stand on the sofa to put the star on top of the tree. One more page.  _ Because of geometric isomerism, two isomers of but-2-ene are formed as well as but-1-ene.  _ His pencil is but a stump scribbling down answers. He’s just going to have to type it up or scan it later, but it’s easier than trying to create skeletal formulae inside the text boxes. Ruler. He needs a ruler for the straight lines. Cis and trans but-2-ene. E and Z, entgegen and zusammen. Which carbon takes priority? He draws the structures and resists the urge to crumple the paper in frustration as the ruler slips slightly. Wonky lines are enough to lose marks with Dr Johnson, he had warned them many times. Time to erase the line and start again. And finally,  _ finally  _ he’s done. No more homework. No more organic chem. He is free of it for the rest of the year.

  
  


Christmas is a strange event in the Grayson-Wayne-Pennyworth household. Alfred is the only one of them who is religious, so he goes to church on Christmas Eve while the rest of them relax at home with whatever bad Christmas movie is on TV. When he was younger, Damian often went with him, not knowing the words to the carols or prayers, and not believing in the religion, but enjoying the strange comfort of standing by candlelight listening to a hundred voices sing. He does not go this year, but he cherishes the times he did. And so Alfred goes to church late in the evening, normally after 9pm, and comes back late. It is not midnight mass, Alfred is always quick to correct, he is not Catholic, just a special Christmas service. They always try to stay up until midnight, or until he comes back, and always fail. When Alfred returns from church, he wakes them up and sends them to bed. It’s a futile gesture: one of them is always sleeping on the couch because there aren’t enough rooms and someone’s always visiting. Sometimes it’s Tim, if he’s not doing something with his team or one of their families. Sometimes it’s Jason, if he isn’t with  _ his _ friends. Sometimes it’s Cass, back from Hong Kong, but she rarely makes the trip. The few times no one’s visited, they’ve group-called on Christmas Day instead. 

Christmas morning means pancakes loaded with every topping they could dream of. Damian always tries to put fruit on his - raspberries, or chunks of apple - alongside his sauce and cream. Dick has no reservations about his health, piling every sweet topping that vaguely goes together on top in a sickening tower that he somehow consumes without choking. Tim at least attempts to match his toppings: chocolate sauce and chunks of fudge or oreo, and squirts of cream, or sometimes - like Damian - he has fruit. Alfred has his with maple syrup, traditional to the core, though Damian knows he prefers the British pancakes, rolled up with lemon juice and sugar. They don’t cook for the rest of the day, instead spending the whole day enjoying each other’s company. It was a weird tradition for Damian to get used to at first, back when he was prickly and snappish and didn’t want to get in anyone’s way, but the more years passed, the more fun he found it. He’d far rather spend the day playing board games with his brothers and Alfred, and tossing wrapping paper across the apartment for Titus and Alfred the cat to play with, than indulge in one of Father’s enormous, but rigid, Christmas banquets. 

They give each other two presents each, one big and one small, and instead of a proper Christmas lunch, they snack on cookies or whatever snacks Dick had grabbed from the grocery store. There is always music playing, a constant soundtrack of traditional carols and more modern peppy Christmas tunes. Sometimes they sing along, when a particularly popular one comes up. In the evening, when they get hungry, they order far too much Chinese, and sprawl across the floor in a tangled pile of limbs, halfway to a food coma. Tim taught them all years ago how to trick the TV into thinking they were in a different country, so when they’re all worn out and no longer bickering good-naturedly, or shrieking with laughter, Alfred turns on the Doctor Who Christmas special. It's the only time Damian watches Doctor Who, so he can never follow the plot, but it's such a staple of their Christmas tradition that he loves it anyway. Besides, Tim follows it avidly enough to explain the most relevant details, and Alfred knows enough of its history to help them follow along. And then they are tired and full and happily poking fun at each other, and watching whatever late night TV actually plays on Christmas Day until they all fall asleep.  


The next morning, Damian wakes up on the living room floor. He has a pillow under his head and a blanket tucked around him that weren't there before, but his body still aches slightly from sleeping in an odd position on a hard surface. Tim is curled up in a tight ball on the couch, head at an awkward angle on the arm, but looking peaceful and breathing evenly. Dick is already awake and Damian can hear him bouncing around in the kitchen bothering Alfred. He can smell eggs cooking and hear the crackle of hash browns frying in oil. His stomach growls. When he sits up and stretches, Titus sticks his nose in Damian’s face, begging for his own breakfast, and any chance of going back to sleep is gone. As if he were going back to sleep anyway. 

After giving Titus his breakfast, he scarfs down eggs and potatoes and some fried veggies. Tim still hasn’t woken up, despite their noise, so they pull back the curtains dramatically to wake him up. It doesn’t work. All he does is roll over to hide his face in the couch cushions, mumbling about the brightness. Dick is secretly evil, so he engages in a tickle fight, aiming right for the spots he knows are vulnerable, and Tim shrieks as he topples onto the floor.

“Go get breakfast, Tim,” Dick tells him. “Alfred cooked so much. You’d better appreciate it.” Tim, yawning, nods and gets his own plate.

  
  


Dick has Boxing Day off, too, even though it’s not a proper holiday, and they spend most of the day lounging around: playing video games, and sniping each other with leftover popcorn kernels when they’re bored. In the afternoon, they walk through the city, pausing every so often to chuck snowballs, or stuff ice down each other’s collars until Alfred gives them all withering glares and they stop with that nonsense. They duck into a tiny cafe that’s open and get hot chocolate - nowhere near as good as Alfred’s post-patrol concoctions, though they’ve long suspected he drugged them so they all slept instead of staying up for casework, but still warm and wholesome and good - then wander some more. The lights all turn on and even though Dick and Damian have lived here for years, they still marvel at them every time. When they get back, their cheeks are flushed and their fingers and toes are numb, but they’re grinning ear to ear. Dinner is reheated Chinese, eaten while sat cross legged on the floor, or sprawled across the couch, and yelling out stupid answers to questions on old quiz shows. It’s a slow day, unchaotic and meandering, but that’s exactly how they like it.  


Taking down the tree is as much of a palava as putting it up. Alfred, in true British tradition, insists on taking it down on January 6th, precisely. The few years Jason has visited for Christmas and/or New Year's, he's spent this day making nothing but Shakespeare jokes, from Twelfth Night most often, and while they think Alfred appreciates the joke, and definitely loves that Jason enjoys Shakespeare as much as he does, the jokes get a bit annoying eventually. This year, as he has every year, he makes a huge spread of food, a feast fit for a king, or a pack of ravenous young men, and they pick at it while they take down strings of lights and glittery baubles. They take the star down last and, as always, Damian gets to take it down. He’s not even the smallest anymore - that role belongs to Tim - but he’s the youngest and some habits never die. Once all the decorations are down, they pack the tree away for next year, back into the storage cupboard. The apartment looks bare without it.

  
  


Before he can really get used to the bare apartment, it’s back to Ithaca and college and classes. He gets the subway, and the bus, and doesn’t nap because he’s always convinced he’ll miss his stop. He climbs the stairs to his dorm with tired feet - travelling always wears him out - and flops down face first on the bed. Alec isn’t back yet. Damian vaguely remembers a discussion of holiday plans, from before the horror of finals week really set in, where he said he was visiting relatives...somewhere. Somewhere out of state: he said he was flying. Guatemala? Unless it was somewhere else entirely. It  _ was  _ well over a month ago. Damian can be forgiven for not remembering his roommate’s precise holiday plans. 

In any case, he’s got the room to himself for the time being, if not the dorm. He knows Inigo is back, if he ever left, and probably Elsie too. It’ll be quiet for a few more days yet, as people start to dribble back in. Next weekend will be the big rush where everyone comes back at once, and that’s precisely why Damian came back early. If he can avoid the rush, he can get a few days of relative peace to get ahead on readings, get first pick at the dining hall, listen to music or podcasts, all without being disturbed. He also doesn’t have to battle all the other students on the bus out from New York, gets his own seat on the shuttle, can make his way back at his own pace, and isn’t pressured to go out as soon as he sets his bag down. It’s nice. He doesn’t bother unpacking yet, instead sliding off his shoes, chucking them in the corner, and curling up in bed for a nap. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In writing this chapter, I realised that despite all the Christmas movies, I have no idea how Americans do Christmas. All I know is Britishness. And so began my frantic "is [insert tradition here] something americans do?" in the discord chat at 2am. So if you're wondering why there's a lot of random stuff that I've lumped on Alfred, that's why. I also realised that a lot of my family's traditions are absolutely bonkers and not something that _anyone_ does, regardless of nationality. So that was fun.  
> The only thing that I feel needs clarifying maybe is that we always take down our trees/decorations on January 6th because it's twelfth night and leaving them up after then is bad luck. I have no clue why that is a thing, but if anyone wants a long-winded explanation of twelfth night as a holiday (also known as the feast of epiphany) from early modern England just let me know. The same goes for Boxing day. I know so much about Boxing day from back in the the olden days now.  
> Anyway, I've got a chicken to cook because I got roped into doing Christmas dinner for our house, so I'm just gonna post this and run.  
> Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, and I hope everyone has an amazing day!


	6. Interlude (Alec)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a lot of questions. They learn the answers to some of them. feat. dorm shenanigans, Jon Kent, horror movies, and Gotham being actually crazy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys asked for it (or didn't)! Someone in the comments mentioned that they'd like to see oneshots with OC backstories, and I don't have those exactly, but!! You get this!   
> Alec - for those who don't remember - is Damian's roommate, and he has opinions to share with you all.

Alec likes his roommate. Damian’s quiet, doesn’t make a mess, doesn’t bring anyone back to the dorm and make him sleep in the common area like Inigo does to his roommate, and doesn’t bring anything illegal in. He seems like the kind of guy who’s there to study, not make friends. Which is kind of sad, if Alec’s honest. He tries his hardest to include Damian in social things and make him feel like a part of the gang, but Damian seems determined to ignore any and all attempts to make friends. He asked him to come fencing and they went exactly three times together before Damian said it was too different to sword fighting and switched to just going for a run in the mornings instead. 

What the hell? Who taught this man sword fighting? Is that even a thing real people do? That was not a rhetorical question, by the way. He’s dying to know, dude.

  
  


He thinks maybe Damian would get on better with Inigo - they both have knives in common, anyway - but Damian seems to have some kind of meta-power that is asshole detection and eventually even Alec can tell the guy’s a bit of a dick. You don’t just kick your roommate out at 2am during midterms so you can get it on with the girl from journalism 101. That’s not cool. Also he leaves his stuff lying around in the shared bathroom which, sure, you intimidated everyone too much at orientation for them to dream of taking anything but you don’t have to shove it in their faces, ok? So maybe they dodged a bullet when Damian decided about a month before the rest of them that Inigo was not the one. 

  
  


When he meets the brother, he’s even more confused because that guy is...extroverted. And ok, so he knows what people say about him and his energy levels, he knows he’s enthusiastic and friendly and has a tendency to bounce instead of walk, but this guy takes all that and dials it up to eleven. He smiles  _ so much.  _ It’s almost unnerving. No guy who’s name is literally, genuinely, unironically, Dick should smile that much. How has it not been bullied out of him by now? But, yeah, the brother is friendly and there is no way that a guy with a brother like that doesn’t know how to make friends. Why is Damian like this? This makes no sense.

  
  


It shouldn’t surprise him that Damian’s first ‘friend’ is Ziba. They seem quite similar, both quiet and reserved, though Ziba is slightly more inclined to get involved in stuff. She’d joined them on the scavenger hunt, anyway. They also both speak Farsi apparently? That’s cool. He also happens to know Damian speaks French, Spanish, and possibly Mandarin  _ at least.  _ But, hey, at least he’s making friends. The best part of their budding friendship is that sometimes they bring food back and it is so good. Seriously. Alec could have died happy the moment he tried their lentil stew and it’s only got better from there. 

  
  


And then Damian goes home for the holidays and he didn’t realise until after he was gone that, huh, that’s the first time he’d seen him asleep. Okay, so that’s a lie. Alec’s seen him sleep before, but Damian has this habit of sleeping very lightly and waking up very early so he doesn’t normally get to witness Damian sleeping flat on his back, hands crossed over his chest, sleeping as if he were dead. It’s spooky. He wakes him up and helps him pack and then he’s gone and Alec’s alone in their room for the first time in weeks. 

He mooches his way down to the common area and finds a little cluster of their hallmates sprawled across the sofas. Jack, Inigo’s poor roommate, looks half asleep, wrapped in a blanket and unashamed of his fluffy socks. There’s Ziba, serene as usual, and tapping away at her phone. The girl next to her is her roommate, Alec knows, but even after four months of living in the same hall, he cannot remember her name. She’s talking to the air, hands waving dramatically, but no one’s listening. 

“I’m telling you,” she says, and geez her voice is loud, “he’s weird as shit. There’s a reason why I’d rather climb up to your window, Jack, even when Inigo’s there. I swear to god, he - oh, Alec, hi!” He slumps onto the remaining armchair and only just avoids kicking Jack’s dangling hand.

“Hey, uh… Elsie. What’s up?” He’s ninety percent sure he got her name right and she doesn’t complain or correct him so that’s a point in his favour. 

“We were just talking about your roomie,” she says, and Ziba lets out a long-suffering sigh next to her.

“We already talked about this, Els. He’s fine. He’s a perfectly normal, decent guy who happens to be shy. Just because you surprised him and he wouldn’t let you climb in through the window at midnight doesn’t mean he’s got some awful secret for you to find.” Elsie scoffs in disbelief and then turns back to Alec.

“So,” she asks. “You got any hot gossip? What’s it like living with the mysterious Damian?”

That’s… huh? Why is  _ Damian  _ the hall cryptid and not Elsie who literally only Ziba ever sees? What’s he even meant to say? ‘Oh yeah, he’s my roommate. We get on fine. He sleeps like an actual corpse and his brother is the human embodiment of a golden retriever who’s name is Dick and he knows how to sword fight and speaks at least five languages, but you know, he’s cool. Just a normal guy doing normal guy things’? 

In the end he says pretty much exactly that.

“He’s pretty cool. Kinda introverted. Sword fights, I think? And he’s like hella good at languages. I’ve heard him speak at least four and I know Ziba’s heard him speaking Farsi as well. Otherwise he’s just… quiet, you know? Keeps to himself.” Elsie doesn’t seem impressed with this. She flops over the edge of the sofa and groans.

“Y’all are so  _ boring _ . There’s gotta be  _ something.”  _ They all collectively roll their eyes at her and go back to sitting in silence. “Seriously, guys. He’s from  _ Gotham.  _ Everyone knows Gotham’s like, actual batshit insanity all rolled up in one pint-sized city. I’m telling you, he’s hiding something. What do you know about his family? Hmm? Anyone ever seen or heard anything about his family?” Time to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand.

“He lives with his brother in New York,” he says. “He’s a kids gymnastics instructor or something, super friendly. I met him when he picked him up for thanksgiving weekend.” Ziba jumps on it, eager to defend her friend from Elsie’s insatiable nosiness.

“His parents aren’t married. He hasn’t seen his mom since he was eleven. She doesn’t live in America. If you ever tell him I told you, you will regret it.” They don’t question Ziba’s protectiveness. If he were Damian, he wouldn’t want people throwing his dirty laundry around either. Jack, who had stayed out of the whole thing until this point, points out that if Damian doesn’t talk about his family, it’s for a reason, and that reason probably isn’t anything good.

“That doesn’t mean,” he says sternly, his eyes narrowed in Elsie’s direction, “that we should pry. Seriously, Elsie. Don’t force him to talk about stuff that might be painful. That’s a dick move.” Elsie moans and groans and complains but agrees. 

  
  


Alec assumes that’s the end of it, that there won’t be any more discussion of Damian being odd, and sure enough they all go home that weekend without talking about it again. They come back after the holidays to another semester of stress and shenanigans and a ton of assignments. Alec ends up in a study group with some other Econ students because they get confused by math and he gets confused by the wordy bits so between the four of them, they muddle through just fine. Damian goes to his own classes, and has his own hobbies, and they kind of just... exist in the same space. They're friends, of course, they hang out, but they're just busy a lot and don't spend hours talking about nothing like they used to.  


  
  


Damian is teaching that self-defense class with Frazier and Lara, now, because it turns out he knows more than Frazier does (and possibly more than Lara, too, but Lara is terrifying so he has no idea what she knows). The three of them get along like a house on fire. Lara and Damian temper Frazier’s enthusiasm and Damian helps him gang up on Lara and have some more fun instead of just constantly going over exercises until they’re ready to drop. 

The most recent session Alec attended had been...interesting. They’d all been struggling with a specific movement, despite numerous demonstrations, and they were tired and thirsty and their muscles felt like jelly and they still hadn’t done it to Lara’s exacting standards so they kept going. And going. And going. And then Damian told them to stop. He told them to clear the floor. He told them he was going to show them how to use it in context, and then, one at a time, he was going to get each of them to attempt it on either him, Frazier, or Lara once and only once and then they could call it a day. They cleared the floor.

Alec had always known, deep down, that Damian knew how to fight. He hadn’t seen it yet, but if he knew how to sword fight and knew enough to help lead the sessions then he must be pretty good at it. He didn’t know how good. He’s expecting Damian to go one on one with either Lara or Frazier, probably Lara because she’s better at sparring than instructing. What he isn’t expecting for each of them to take a corner of the ring and all fight each other. What he isn’t expecting is for Damian to take both of them at the same time and  _ win _ . 

He does see the movement they were meant to be doing, and it does make a lot more sense like that. He also sees a side of Damian that he doesn’t recognise, a side that isn’t the normal cool, calm, collected dude Alec knows and loves. This Damian is vicious and snake-like. He strikes fast and unrestrained, dances beneath their fists and feet, grins, feral and bright, and then does it again. Alec’s a little in love with his roommate. Just a bit. That’s allowed. He thinks anyone could be a little in love with Damian at this moment. 

He gets paired with Frazier to practise and he’s almost relieved because anyone going up against Damian is going to have to go against the guy who just beat two of their instructors into the ground and  _ laughed _ and Alec doesn’t envy them at all. Besides, Frazier is a bit of a pushover. If he thinks they’ve got it, he’ll let them win to give them confidence. To Frazier, confidence is key. Alec has heard Damian tell him that confidence is what gets amateurs killed without an ounce of sarcasm.

  
  


Just after midterms, Alec sees Damian on campus with some guy a little younger than him and it pulls him up short. He waves, obviously, and shouts out a quick ‘see you later’ across the quad, but he has to run to his next class so he doesn’t have time to ponder on it except. Except Alec had somehow just assumed that Damian had never had friends before. It would certainly explain his weirdness with social situations. But apparently he does? Because that kid does not go to Cornell, Alec would bet his last pack of shrimp ramen on it, and those are his favorite. 

He sees them again in the dining hall at dinner. Damian, and a guy a few years younger, with dark brown hair and blue eyes and a huge grin and they look so normal, just two guys catching up, that Alec doesn’t want to get between them. But then he remembers that Damian is his roommate, his friend, and that he should be allowed to eat with him. So he collects his plate of chicken pie and a jello pot and plops down on Damian’s other side. Damian doesn’t introduce him, just picks at his potato with renewed ferocity. Alec turns to his friend - and wow those eyes are blue - and says “hey, I’m Alec, Damian’s roommate.” the guy smiles even wider, if that were possible, and replies in the strongest Kansas farm-boy accent Alec’s ever heard in his life.

“Hey, I’m Jon. Sorry Dames is bein’ a grouch. He’s been dragging me around all day; I think he’s tired.” Alec gapes slightly as he registers what he said.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m used to it.” He takes a bite of his pie. “So, how’d you and Mr Grumpy-pants meet?” Kansas farm-boy freezes for a second. He blinks and bites his lip, glances at Damian, shrugs, and then seems to come up with an answer.

“Our dads introduced us. They said we both needed more friends. They were both right.” Well that’s distressingly normal. Alec’s dad had introduced him to his childhood friend when they were both six years old, because they both got pushed off the swings at the park by the same bully and dad just happened to think that meant they should be friends for life. He hadn’t been wrong, exactly, but his reasoning was a little out of left field. He wonders what these two had gotten up to as kids, how they’d even found the time to maintain a friendship when they lived so many miles apart. 

“Jon’s visiting,” Damian tells him. “He wants to see what college is like and I’m his only friend currently at college.” Jon seems to take offense at this.

“Hey! Tim-”

“Already graduated. Also not your friend.”

“Wally-”

“Tt. Ex-teammates don’t count.”

“Colin?”

“Did you two ever meet?”

“Ack, fine, whatever.”

It’s weirdly domestic, watching them bicker. 

“So, you’re in high school still?” he asks and Jon flushes.

“Yeah. I graduate soon, though. Only a few more months.” He sounds so excited. Alec isn’t sure how to break it to him that college is only better because you don’t have parents watching you all the time and even then sometimes that’s a bad thing. The mound of laundry currently piled on his desk chair would certainly say so. He’s not going to actually say that to the kid though, so he makes vaguely agreeable noises and goes back to his dinner.

It turns out Jon isn’t staying the night. Alec doesn’t question it, even though he leaves way too late to get the last bus back to the city and doesn’t have an overnight bag. It’s not like he takes public transit much anyway. Maybe there’s a train or something? Maybe he’s loaded and getting an uber to wherever he needs to go. It’s really not his place to ask. Jon leaves, and Damian provides no further details, and Alec doesn’t ask.

  
  


They have a horror movie night, and, looking back, that’s probably a terrible idea. Alec actually manages to drag Damian along, and the whole gang is crammed onto the sofas in the common area with blankets and popcorn (even if it took several attempts to not burn it) and a Netflix account between them, ready and waiting to be scared out of their wits. They start with the classics, switch to some new ones that range from sort of okay to downright terrifying to laughably bad. They watch It of course, because what horror movie night is complete without killer clowns. It’s pretty awesome, all things considered. Damian has them in stitches at times with his wry commentary. He never seems scared, even though everyone else screams at least once, and actually Damian did say he was from Gotham. That explains a lot about, well, everything. Why would you be scared of horror movies when your entire childhood was basically a horror movie?

Hindsight is 20/20.

He wakes up in the dark with the feeling that something is wrong. He couldn’t say what, precisely, but there’s definitely something. He lies awake and takes a deep breath. He can hear a party going on in the next building, someone running outside, a car horn. Bed Sheets rustling. Damian must be turning over in his sleep. He can still smell smoke from their ill-fated popcorn escapades earlier that evening, the paint Damian was using to finish a birthday present between classes. There’s another rustle. Alec remembers quite suddenly that Damian sleeps like the dead. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound, barely seems to breathe. But he’s certainly breathing now. Heavily, like he’s running, like he’s scared. He hisses slightly through his teeth in a cut off whimper. Alec gets up. He doesn’t know what to do, just that he should help his friend. He crouches next to Damian’s bed and watches as he flinches and curls in on himself. When Damian brings his arms up to cover his head and trembles, Alec does what he always does when he’s stuck: he calls his mom.

She doesn’t answer on the first ring, but it’s late so he gives her time. She answers before he gets to voicemail, though, and he immediately starts to ramble.

“Mami, I think Damian’s having a nightmare and he’s shaking and breathing so hard and I don’t want to touch him in case I make it worse but I don’t know what to do, mami, please help.” Alec’s mom is an absolute miracle of a woman and immediately seems to grasp what the problem is.

“Well, wake him up then, idiota. Can’t do anything to help while he’s still asleep.” Inwardly, Alec isn’t sure she’s right, but he’d never say that aloud. 

“But what if I make it worse, Mami,” he whispers and she laughs.

“How could you make it worse? Hmm? Wake the poor boy up, unless seeing you  _ is _ his nightmare.” Absolute savage. He deserves it for waking her up, though. He stretches out a hand and taps Damian’s shoulder, shakes him slightly. 

Then, he’s halfway across the room and his hand hurts.

  
  


Alec has learnt a lesson and that lesson is ‘do not wake Damian up if he’s having a nightmare.’ Poor guy is barely awake and yet he’s already apologising and he’s still  _ shaking _ , dude just let yourself calm down first. He tells Damian it’s fine, even though his hand really does kind of hurt, and it stops him apologising immediately. Instead he sits on the edge of his bed, stiff as a board and stares at his hands. They are the only part of him not shaking.

“You want to talk about it?” He shakes his head, then pauses, closes his eyes, and nods. He doesn’t speak, though, so Alec does as his mom always tells him and takes the initiative.

“It was the movies, right? Something triggered it?” Another nod. This time Damian actually responds, which is progress.

“How much do you know about Gotham?” he asks and, uhh, okay. Not the direction Alec thought this was going.

“Not much, to be honest,” he says. “It’s the most crime-ridden city in the US? Crazy high number of vigilantes? That’s about it.” 

“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Damian says and chuckles darkly. “I grew up there, sort of. Spent a not insignificant portion of my childhood there. Before I moved to live with Dick. Our most famous villain is the Joker. He’s a really bad, really psychotic, clown. Everyone in the city has had some kind of run-in with him. He’s particularly fond of setting gas bombs off around the city, likes to cause as many casualties as possible.” Oh, mierda, this is worse than he thought. 

“So movies with killer clowns? Not your cup of tea.” Damian laughs, somehow, and it’s slightly hysterical, but he’ll take it.

“Not really, no. I mean we’ve also got a scarecrow who sets off gas that makes you experience your worst fears over and over, a literal mutated crocodile and a guy who carves people’s faces off and turns them into dolls. Killer clowns are the least of our concerns. Mostly Batman takes care of it. Sometimes he doesn’t.” Well that’s… enlightening. Why on earth would people choose to live in a place like that?

“That’s insane, man. I don’t know how you do it. But, you know if it ever gets too much you can tell us, right? Like, if we’re watching movies and you need us to turn it off, we’ll understand.” Damian looks at his hands, swings his feet. He looks very small like this. And Damian’s a pretty big guy, he shouldn’t look so much like a child. He doesn’t seem convinced.

“Seriously! Trauma’s no joke. We all gotta look out for each other, yeah? Tell you what, I’ll make sure we never watch another clown movie again if you take out all the spiders.” Damian smiles at that, a true and real smile, and Alec’s done his job now. He’s fixed it.

He does send a text to the rest of the hall. No more horror movies. No more clowns. They ask for context. He does not provide. Jack sends him an ancient Lord of the Rings meme. Alright then, keep your secrets. Yeah, Jack, he will. They’re not his secrets to tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be doing one interlude chapter for each of the major OCs/people I think could have interesting takes on stuff. This is the first of three that I currently have planned/started, but there will be more. Unless you hated this, in which case I will write them anyway and use them as character studies.  
> In any case, hope you enjoyed this. Let me know what you think and I'll reply because I love talking to you lot, you're amazing!  
> Thanks for all the love <3 I'll be back once postgrad applications are done (someone kill me before this personal statement does).


	7. Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first few days back at college, and Damian is maybe making a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It snowed this weekend!! I am way too excited about that. We took the dogs for a walk and got super wet and cold and it was brilliant! I don't think we're meant to get any more, but it's also not meant to get above freezing until Sunday, so it should stick around for a while.  
> Anyway, I've been sittingon this chapter for about a week, and you might have seen a snippet of it on my tumblr as a six sentence Sunday. It's also a bit shorter than the last one. But I hope you like it anyway!!

He doesn’t plan to see anyone at all for at least two days. After all the hustle and bustle of the city, a few days of peace and quiet sounds heavenly, and he really does have a lot of reading to do so he can stay ahead once the semester starts in earnest. Even so, when Elsie knocks on his door and asks if he wants breakfast, he knows better than to say no. Elsie may be a bit of a cryptid - Damian can count the number of times they’ve had a conversation on his fingers and have change - she’s a bit of a force of nature, and tends to just drag people along for the ride. So, he goes to the cafeteria for breakfast. It wasn't something he'd really planned on, but there's basically nothing in the cupboards somehow, so he doesn't have many options, and the cafeteria is better than nothing.  


He gets a bowl of cereal and an apple, in part because he really does not trust the eggs after 8am and the toast is always cold, but Elsie waits in line for an omelette. There aren’t that many people, but apparently the staff are taking the lingering winter break as an excuse to be slow because it takes her a good ten minutes to sit down across from him. 

“So,” she says, dramatically stabbing her omelette with her fork, “any particular reason you came back early?” He shrugs. The apple is pleasantly crunchy, cold and sweet and just the right amount of juicy that it doesn’t leave a residue on his chin. The best kind of apple.

“Could say the same to you,” he tells her, and she bears her teeth in a grin. 

“Oh, I never left. Parents didn’t ask and I’m not going unless I  _ have  _ to, you know?” Damian doesn’t know, not really. He can’t imagine not going home to Dick and Alfred for the holidays. But, he thinks maybe, just maybe, he would get it if he still lived with father, that he would clutch at his independence and avoid the horrible tense awkwardness that pervaded his old home. So, he nods, and lets her keep talking.

“Let me tell you, new year’s out here  _ sucks _ . Like, I thought maybe, because y’all are students, there’d be something going on but it was just dead. Couple fireworks went off but it was like everyone went home just to watch the ball drop in New York. Only person around was Inigo and we all know how much of an ass he is. Christmas was alright though. The common room was empty so I got to watch all the awful movies on the big TV and eat nothing but crap. I even bought my own present!” She pulls out her lanyard and sure enough, there’s another fuzzy keychain dangling from the end. Damian smiles at her. He might not know her as well as his other hallmates, but he’s glad she found some happiness despite being alone. He thinks perhaps she's just that kind of person - enjoying company, thriving in it, but not requiring it - resilient in her contentedness.  


“Maybe you could come up to the city next year. We don’t normally go to the ball drop, but there’s plenty of other stuff to do there. We don’t do Christmas like normal people either, but I’m pretty sure my brother would die of happiness if I brought a friend home, so it’s not like you wouldn’t be welcome. No pressure or anything,” he says, looking down at his unfinished cereal, “just the option's there, if you wanted.” When he looks up, Elsie is beaming at him. It looks more at home on her face than that tight grin from before. Elsie’s face is made for smiling, he thinks, and then realises he should probably smile back, so he does.

  
  


He spends the afternoon with his laptop hunting down textbooks, and by the end of it he wants to stand on top of a tall building and scream. Dick used to do it with him sometimes, back when everything was frustrating and the absence of Robin ached like an open wound. It was cathartic. Perhaps he should suggest it, once everyone gets back; a group scream during finals week might be helpful. When he shoves his laptop away, he has only ordered one textbook. Some of his teachers were nice enough to upload each week’s reading as a pdf, but most are requesting they use specific editions, which means he can’t just buy them secondhand on ebay. He’ll have to go to the campus bookshop, all the way on the other side of campus, and hope he has enough on his card. 

The walk over is chilly, and he tucks his face into his scarf to keep out the wind. It’s a good thing Jason had taken up knitting. He doubts any other scarf could be quite so effective at blocking out the cold. His hands begin to go numb in his pockets somewhere between the drama building, and the starbucks near E block, but he doesn’t want to subject his nose to the biting wind, so he doesn’t take them out to blow on them, instead just making fists to conserve the heat. The bookshop is almost closing by the time he arrives, but they let him in when he shows the list he has written down. They’re quite pleasant, actually, showing him the stack of donated textbooks from the previous term at a mark-down price that knocks out most of his reading list. The rest, even the most price-savvy seller (and all the staff in the shop are students, so they know about getting books for as cheap as possible) cannot help with. But, Damian has just enough to pay for them, and if he brings last term’s textbooks that he no longer needs, he can get money back for them. It won’t be the full price back, but any money is good money, this Damian has learnt well.

He stops by the little corner store on his way back to pick up a few things for the bare cupboards in their kitchen - easy to cook things, mostly, some cans of soup, bread and cheese, instant pasta meals - and to top up his student card for the cafeteria. It’s weird seeing campus so empty, no students walking between classes or hanging out in front of buildings. Even in early December, before finals week had kicked off, there’d always been a few people around, but now it's deserted. He quite likes it, really. It's quiet and still in a way the city never is, with a kind of peace that’s always lovely in winter. It won’t snow yet, the air is too dry, but it’s cold enough to, and Damian hopes that maybe there will be some when the others get back. A snowball fight would be fun, he thinks, and grins into his scarf. They won't even see him coming, and his aim is still impeccable.  


  
  


Over the next few days, he sees Elsie more often than he had at any point in the autumn semester. For all that she claims her holidays were good, he thinks she might be lonely, with none of her usual friends and acquaintances to hang out with. They eat breakfast together every morning, and sometimes he joins her to do stretches in the common room after his run. They’re not  _ close  _ exactly, but they understand each other better now, he thinks. He knows better than to think this will stop her nosiness about his private life. 

They’re sitting in the common room, Damian reading ahead in a zoology textbook, Elsie tapping away at her phone, when she asks for his socials.

“What?” he asks flatly, annoyed at the interruption.

“You’re in the group chat, obviously, but come on you must have insta, or tiktok or a secret tumblr that you keep hidden from the world, give me  _ something _ .” Damian grins slightly and rolls his eyes.

“If I had a ‘secret tumblr that I keep hidden from the world’,” he says, air quotes included, “why would I tell you?” She gasps, hand over her heart in mock outrage.

“You wound me, Damian. But seriously, socials. Tell me. I need to know.” Damian shrugs and turns back to his reading.

“Don’t have any,” he says, and Elsie looks honestly horrified by this revelation. Perhaps it's just because she can't use the information to stalk him - he knows all about her incessant nosiness - but Damian wants to believe that she wants to be friends. These past few days have been pleasant, and he thinks maybe they've turned a corner - away from her obsession after the incident last term that means she will never knock on his window again. He can be more open with her now, more like friends than acquaintances, and it's a good development.  


“Not even  _ Facebook? _ ” she presses, with a shudder, as if the idea of him having a Facebook account were worse than him having no social media at all.

“I just didn’t see the point,” he explains. “I could get hold of everyone I needed to in other ways.”

“What, like a carrier pigeon?” she laughs, and he lets himself laugh with her. In truth, he’d given up on social media not long after moving in with Dick, when the strangers constantly hounding him got too much to bear. It had not been hard. Everyone he’d cared to keep in contact with could contact him through other means. It hadn’t mattered then, but he can see how it might now, with new people and new friends and the whole world online. It’s not enough anymore to have texts and calls and whatsapp, when everything is shared in online spaces. So, when Elsie suggests instagram - ‘so he can show the world his cat’ as she puts it - he relents. She is far too pleased with herself about it, but Damian doesn’t really care about whatever bet she’s just won; he’s too busy picking a photo of Titus and Alfred the cat to use as a profile picture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: most unis do a book exchange programme where you can sell the shop your old textbooks at a discount (I think ours pays back a third of the rrp which is kind of rubbish actually). Take a look and see if yours does the same if you need some money quickly. Also, they sell them back to students at a discount too, so if you want secondhand copies, and can't find them on ebay, you might as well take a look.   
> Anyway, thanks so much for all your comments!! I have a great time answering them, even if it sometimes takes me a while (sorry for that) and I love hearing what you think!


	8. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian has some self-care, and it starts to snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shorter chapter this time, but hopefully it'll tide you all over.

He falls back into studying as if nothing else in the world matters. There isn’t anything else really, just lectures and classes and homework and reading. He comes back from classes and does homework until Alec drags him away for dinner. There’s cooking with Ziba once a week, self-defense and martial arts twice, and that’s more than enough time away from his books. Damian can feel himself drowning, but it’s fine, he tells himself. Everything’s fine.

He doesn’t know why it’s hitting him now, when he’s already got a full semester under his belt, but suddenly the class load that felt normal before feels like a mountain to climb. Damian’s climbed a lot of mountains in his time, and in worse conditions. He’ll be fine. He just needs to keep on working hard, keep on doing what needs to be done, keep on being the best.

It’s one of the reasons he and Tim never really got along, he realises over a psych study. Damian wants to be the best. Tim just wants to be enough. And both of them were battling the other for something that they thought was the same but was really quite different. The best, for Damian, enough, for Tim, was a place at father’s side, a place of trust and love. He’s not sure if either of them would have gotten there. It’s a good thing he’s better now at realising his own limits. It’s a good thing he knows when to stop fighting and take a - oh

_ Oh. _

Right. Yeah, that explains a few things.

He needs to take a break, so he goes to Jack. Jack, with his fuzzy socks and patterned blankets. Jack, who’s majoring in psych so he can be a therapist. Jack, who’s on the football team and objectively enormous but always manages to look small when he’s curled up on the common room couch. If there’s anyone who’ll know what to do, it’s Jack. Except Jack is confused by this, as if he somehow hasn’t noticed that he is the dorm equivalent of a teddy bear. 

“You just always know what to do. If anyone needs a hand with something emotional or whatever,” Damian tells him, waving one hand absently, “we send them your way and you fix them.” Jack looks surprised still. 

“That’s… wow. I hadn’t realised you guys trusted me that much, I guess,” he says, and Damian blinks.

“It’s got nothing to do with trust. It’s just delegating.” That was probably a bit too much like the old Damian. But he’s stressed and kind of tired, and can’t be bothered at the moment. He’s allowed to be a bit snappish sometimes.

“Well what seems to be the problem then?” Jack asks.

“I need a break,” he tells him, and then utters the cursed words he thought he’d never say, “self care, you know?” Jack grins, and Damian wonders if he’s made a horrible mistake.

They watch a movie, and Damian fidgets and his brain whirs at a million miles an hour, because it won’t shut up about how there are things to do, and work, and reading, and he’ll fail if he doesn’t get it done, and, and… 

But every time he almost leaps off the sofa, Jack is there, holding out his bag of skittles to share, and Damian remembers. Jack, at his door on their first day, dragging them out for pizza. Jack, making sure Alec had water and paracetamol the one time he was invited to a party and came back drunk as a skunk. Jack, curled up under a blanket in the common room because Inigo would rather spend time with some girl. Jack, calling all of them in to make Ziba a birthday cake at 11pm, and laughing like a hyena when it turned out a misshapen lump covered in frosting and strawberries. Damian remembers Jack, and his kindness, and sits back down. The least he can do is be kind in return. 

When the movie ends, Damian stands up, and Jack points at him and says “no. Sit down. I am going to get something, and you are going to watch John Mulaney, and you are going to relax.” 

Damian sits back down.

Jack comes back a few minutes later with a huge bowl of popcorn and an arm full of blankets. Damian’s opinion of him just rose by about 50 points: it is so notoriously hard to sneak popcorn past Benny the RA that they have a running tally of who does it the most on a whiteboard taped to the inside of one of the cupboards. Whoever wins at the end of the year gets a prize. Ziba had been winning, but Damian is beginning to think Jack might be a bit of a dark horse. He puts the bowl on the table, and hands Damian a blanket. It makes Damian rock slightly with how heavy it is, mostly because the weight is unexpected. When he sits, he drapes it over him, and wow. This is nice actually. He feels grounded in a way he hadn’t realised he was missing, suddenly unlikely to float away out of his seat, but not trapped. There must be some kind of expression on his face, because Jack laughs - a short, pleased chuckle - and wraps himself tighter in his own blanket. 

“It’s a weighted blanket,” he tells him. “I have a couple. You can keep that one for now.”

Later, they’ll talk. Damian will tell him all about having to be the best at everything, even though that’s impossible and not even expected of him anymore, and Jack will tell him about how being on a team is simultaneously a shared burden and the most pressure he’s ever had. They’ll talk about stress and release, and exercise and quiet minds, and at the end of it all Damian will lay his new blanket over the foot of his bed and smile. But for now, they watch comedy sketch shows, and pass popcorn between them, and laugh.

  
  


He walks out of his Thursday afternoon lab, and it’s snowing. There’s a brief moment where his mind struggles to connect it with the clear blue skies and weak sunshine of the early afternoon before his lab had started, but then it gives up, and he hurries just a little faster back to the dorm. When he’d left after lunch, it had been bright and relatively warm out. He hadn’t bothered with a coat, only a sweater and knitted hat, so he kind of needs to get back quickly so he doesn’t freeze. Damn New York weather. 

When he finally makes it back to the dorm, Alec is sitting on the front step. He’s not playing in the snow, or dancing around, or even tapping his feet. He’s just sitting on the step, watching, and smiling. 

“It snows every year, but every time it’s still beautiful,” he says as Damian reaches the steps.

“Sure,” he says, shrugging the shoulder his backpack isn’t half falling off of, “but you can’t complain when it turns to ice and slush in a few days and you fall over in it.”

“Well, it’s beautiful while it lasts anyway,” Alec tells him, getting up and opening the door. “We should drag the others out for a snowball fight later. I think Jack’s last class ends in a half hour.” Damian grins. It’s exactly what he’d been hoping for and he can’t wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I wrote some of the snow stuff while it was actually snowing here, so that's nice. I'm like Alec in this scenario: snow is beautiful and I love it. Literally the only downside is wading through the mud at the yard once it melts.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: Mark the vet is based on my own Mark the vet who is an absolute angel of a man. Anyone who can stick their hand up a horse's butt and avoid getting kicked in the head is a hero, in my eyes. To all the vets out there: I salute you.  
> I'm not gonna have like a serious update schedule for this. It's a fun side project so I can live out my vet school fantasies by projecting onto fictional characters. Also, I have a whole other long-fic I'm currently writing with a deadline. That being said, I have a whole 2 and a half chapters written at least so it looks like this'll be long too. Oh well.
> 
> If anyone wants to yell at me about this, or their headcanons, or give tips on how college works in the US (because I do not have the slightest clue), hit me up on tumblr [here](https://storm-leviosa-fanfics.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like this. Leave a kudos or comment to let me know what you think.


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